You know you've been around the games hobby too long...

[ffutures]

...when your name turns up on a corpse in someone else's adventure.

Noticing a post from someone who had noticed something odd under his name on Amazon, I decided to do a search for my own name.

And one of the items was

The Golem of Brick Lane (Fantom Empires) by John Sutherland and Gary Chalk (Paperback - 6 Oct 2005)

Further down it says

Excerpt - page 52: "familiar name and find the burial of Marcus Rowland, officiated by Hector's Chapel of Rest, Brick Lane. This is far too much of a coincidence"

So I took a look at the excerpt and found this:



Now I'm wondering how big a part Marcus Rowland plays in the story, and whether I should be pleased, annoyed, or threatening to sue - highly unlikely, but you never know.

Anyone own a copy and able to tell me?

Comments

[speakr2customrs.livejournal.com]

Commiserations on your untimely death.

[ffutures.livejournal.com]

Wouldn't be the first time - back in the eighties and nineties lots of Games Workshop's authors were in the habit of writing each other into adventures as corpses, evil sorcerers, etc.

[gonzo21.livejournal.com]

And so begins the Zombie Terror of Marcus Rowland.

[ffutures.livejournal.com]

Brainnnnzzzzzzzzz...

[freifraufischer.livejournal.com]

I'm a bad guy in an Iron Claw suppliment.

[ffutures.livejournal.com]

I've been an evil sorcerer, a Mega-City Judge (I had to ask people not to do that since my cousin was a real-world judge and had recently died), and so forth.

[gonzo21.livejournal.com]

Regrettably the prevelance of the Twitter Generation brought the Zombie Terror of Marcus Rowland to a premature end when he realised there were very few brains left to feast upon.

[ffutures.livejournal.com]

Sounds about right.

[elfbiter.livejournal.com]

A friend of mine wrote a CoC scenario in the Finnish mag Magus where all the names of both the killers and the killed were based of his roleplaying buddies (including me...) :-)

[major-clanger.livejournal.com]

If you did sue, what would your cause of action be?

If 'Marcus Rowland' proves to have a significant role in the story, and is described in terms that are both clearly a reference to you (e.g. matches your appearance) and which are very derogatory, you might conceivably be able to sue for libel. But that would be rather uphill and if it's taken five years for this to come to your attention then you might find it difficult to show that you've suffered much damage to your reputation.

Or you could claim for unjust enrichment / passing off, in that the author has made money off your reputation with adequately compensating you. This sort of thing has been done where well-known personalities have had their likenesses used in adverts without their permission. Here the question would be: could you have charged the author for permission to use your name and would he have been keen enough to do so to pay? If not, then you've arguably suffered no loss as he wouldn't used your name if he'd had to pay for it.

There are, it has to be said, a lot of cases of well-known people having their name used in fiction or even being used as a character. Unless you're actually defamed there's not much that can be done about this, unless you become such a major character that the author is effectively trading on your reputation. I wonder if Tom Clancy got permission to use HRH Prince Charles as a character in Patriot Games? I notice he and his then wife were conspicuously absent from the movie version.

[heliograph.livejournal.com]

Years ago, when people first started Googling themselves (though this was very much pre-Google), I got an irate e-mail from someone who was offended that he had the same name as a villain in a Space: 1889 fanzine.

I pointed him at the author.

I did put a Rowland's Anti-Massacar (sp?) ad in the print version of TRMGS. But clearly I'm going to need to add him to all our products from now on...

[heliograph.livejournal.com]

Marco Rowlando, motorbike riding made scientist! Made as in Made Man. Ha Ha! Try to sue me now!

[ffutures.livejournal.com]

I wasn't actually being serious about that one.

[ffutures.livejournal.com]

One of these years I really must try to track down the original Rowland of anti-Macassar fame. I very much doubt that we're related, it's a common surname in Wales and my fathers family settled there after emigrating from Russia. It may well be that we're named after the oil...

[ffutures.livejournal.com]

Why would I bother - you'll get endless complaints from people who think it's a typo, that ought to be punishment enough.

[heliograph.livejournal.com]

You're right of course! It should be Rolando!

Re: "The Zombie Terror Of Marcus Rowland...".

[gfieendish.livejournal.com]

Yes, but which one though...?
Apparently there are 5 Marcus Rowland's that have a noticable Net presence, & one of them is a U.S based Sprinter...
(The others include the Production designer for Shawn Of The Dead, a lawyer, the CEO of Chesaspeke Energy in the U.S, & finally a British Lab Technician, that also writes Role Playing Games, whatever they are...?)

Re: "The Zombie Terror Of Marcus Rowland...".

[gonzo21.livejournal.com]

All of them. The Horde Of Zombie Marcus Rowlands will destroy the world as we know it.